Heartless

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Five or six of his men leapt upon her, and Una did not try to swallow her flame as she struggled through their grasping hands. She felt her body expanding, felt her fire building. She shook the men off and ran for the door, bursting into the rainy street just as her wings spread wide.

  “My bounty!” Gervais rushed after her, his sword gripped in his hand. “Come back, dragon, and face me!” he shouted.

  She turned. Their gazes locked. His eyes widened.

  “You forgot me,” she snarled, and her mouth opened.

  A run of silver notes pierced her mind as though from a great distance.

  Una, where are you?

  Rain poured from heaven, steamed off her great body, and rolled from her muzzle. The fire in her eyes dulled to embers.

  “Please,” she whispered, gazing up into the sky. “Please don’t forget . . .”

  The next moment, her shadow passed over The Rampant Dragon and disappeared into the dark clouds.

  Gervais breathed again, then coughed on the fumes that surrounded him. He sat down in the mud of that empty street, dropped his sword into the muck at his side, and cradled his head in his hands. “It’s the widow for me,” he muttered, so miserable he almost wished that dragon girl had succeeded in cooking him.

  “Who was she, anyway?” he wondered.

  25

  In the darkness of his chamber, King Fidel heard as though from a great distance cries in the training yard, the sounds of officers barking commands, but he could not understand their words. He was lost, numb. He knew he would have to gather himself and venture out again soon. But the dragon poison was thick in his veins, and he could not move. If the duke was coming, let him come.

  “Your Majesty.”

  Someone spoke behind him, though he had heard no one enter the room. He recognized the voice, however.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “How did you come here?” Fidel asked.

  “Through the Wood.” The shadowy figure stepped before the king and knelt at his feet. “I bring you news.”

  Fidel shook his head. He could not see the features of the face turned to him, but he reached out and patted a shoulder. “I can bear no more just now, Prince Aethelbald,” he said. “You were right. My son is lost to me, and my daughter – ” He choked on his own words, and his hand shook on the Prince’s shoulder.

  Aethelbald bowed his head. A long silence hung between them, broken only by the king’s shuddering breaths and the cries out in the yard. Aethelbald reached up and took the king’s hand. “Felix is safe,” he said.

  “What?” The king’s voice broke.

  “Felix is safe in my Haven on the Borders between this world and the other,” Aethelbald said.

  “My son?” Fidel whispered.

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  Fidel’s tears fell heavily down his face, and he could not speak for a moment. “You are of their kind,” he murmured at last. “I wasn’t sure what to believe before. All those old wives’ tales come to life, come out of the Wood. It was too fantastic. But you are of the Far World, aren’t you?”

  “I am, Your Majesty,” Aethelbald said.

  Fidel took hold of both Aethelbald’s hands and held them in a tremendous grip. “You are their Prince,” he cried. “You have saved my son!”

  “Yes, Majesty. My faithful servant Dame Imraldera tends him even now. He has been grievously poisoned, but he will live.”

  “Blessings, blessings on you, good Prince!”

  Aethelbald kissed the king’s hand, then lifted him to his feet. “Now you must go,” he said. “The duke comes, and many good men will die needlessly to defend you if you stay. I am sending Sir Oeric and two more of my knights to guard you on your journey north. General Argus has made everything ready for your departure.”

  “Yes.” Fidel nodded and straightened his shoulders, but he felt old and weak. “Yes, what you say is good. Aethelbald, my daughter . . . I saw her, saw what she has become – ”

  What strength remained to the king seemed to flow out as he spoke. He sagged forward, and the Prince caught him.

  “You were right,” Fidel breathed. “You were right all along, and I should have listened to you. I should have protected her.”

  “Fidel.”

  The king looked up. In the darkness he could just see the glint of Aethelbald’s eyes.

  “Fidel,” the Prince said, “you could not have prevented this.”

  “Don’t try to comfort me. I know my own guilt.”

  “Yes,” the Prince said, “you are guilty. You made mistakes. But even so, you could not have prevented what happened.” He held the king upright, made him stand, and pushed back his shoulders. “Now you must go on. Lead your people. The duke will try to find you while you are yet weak. You must hide, and you must grow strong once more. Have courage, good king. Have hope. Your son is safe.”

  “And my daughter?”

  “Have hope,” Aethelbald repeated. He let go of the king and stepped back into the shadows. “I will find Una. Now go.”

  The room was silent again, empty. Fidel went to the door to call his attendants. As he put his hand to the latch he heard the strangest sound, faintly, just beyond the din in the yard. It sounded like birdsong.

  –––––––

  Few people saw her pass. Una developed a dragon’s talent for traveling unnoticed. The burning never eased, but she gradually became accustomed to it until she did not notice it anymore. Her wounded neck healed into a rough scar in a matter of days.

  She flew south, through Beauclair, through the Duchy of Milden, flying blindly. She did not eat or drink, for her fire burned and gave her strength without other sustenance.

  Not until she crossed the borders of Shippening did she know the aim of her flight.

  “Southlands is not far,” she told herself. “Only a few days more.”

  She doubled her speed, tucking her knobby limbs close to her long body until she formed a long black ribbon from nose to tail, snaking through the sky.

  The Red Desert loomed to the east, immense, dry, and hot. Una shuddered when she looked at it. It reminded her of the ocean, vast and unsearchable. Yet the ocean was full of life, while the desert was a landscape of death.

  A world of dragons, she thought.

  Closing her eyes to the sight, she flew on her way.

  Gervais forgot me, but Leonard never will.

  “Una, trust me,” he had said.

  She would trust him. And she would find him.

  –––––––

  Everything burned and smothered, though now and then a soothing, cool breeze broke through the heat. Felix drifted in and out of consciousness, mostly alone. He felt trapped in a constant dream of fire. Sometimes the woman with the gentle hands was present, and her voice comforted him through the haze.

  One night he woke fully for the first time, though the heat of fever still seared inside him. It was late; he could see stars shining through the gently moving leaves above his head. He sat up and looked around the strange room, which seemed no more than a clearing in the Wood. The bed on which he lay grew up out of the ground, rooted like a tree, and the sheets were soft petals and leaves held together by invisible threads. He pushed them back and swung his legs over the side.

  On unsteady feet Felix crossed the room, following a trail of moonlight. There were neither walls nor doors nor windows, only trees growing all around, yet ivy draped these so thickly that he seemed as enclosed as he’d ever been in his own rooms in the palace. He felt around in the ivy until he found a thinner place, then pushed through, out of the clearing.

  Trees stood on either side like walls in a corridor, and moonlight shone on the path like a carpet unrolling at his feet. Felix followed it. Tiny pricks touched his arms and face like biting bugs. He slapped at empty air, and the little pricks stopped. He followed the moonlight, his fevered eyes scanning the trees and the arch of branches over his head. Stars glimmered between the branches like candles in sconces. He could
not tell whether he walked in a forest or in a grand manor house.

  Something gleamed before him. The moonlight seemed to flow down the path to this one spot and stop there, pooling into a small pond of light around an object suspended between the branches of two young birch trees. Felix, stumbling a little, made his way to the end of the corridor and looked upon the object.

  It was a sword.

  Silver and moonlight and strength, all forged into a weapon.

  It filled Felix’s gaze. In his fevered state he felt a tremble of cold fear rush through him as he looked upon it, yet it was beautiful. He longed to touch it but could not move his hands.

  “It belongs to my lord, the Prince.”

  The soft voice he knew spoke behind him. Felix turned slowly and met the gaze of a young woman. Her face was full of moonlight. She smiled. “Go back to bed, young Felix.”

  Felix looked back at the sword, frowning. “Why does he not carry this sword?” he whispered. “It is so beautiful. . . . A sword such as this, it could kill the Dragon.”

  A gentle hand touched his arm. “He will take it up when the time is right,” Dame Imraldera said. “Come, Felix. Come away.”

  He resisted her urging. But a sudden roar just beyond the wall of trees filled his ears. He jumped back in terror and clung to the woman, who put her arms around him. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It cannot come inside.”

  Felix’s breath came in short, panting gasps. “What is out there?”

  “The world of Faerie,” she said.

  The roar, deep and harsh, inhuman yet not quite animal, filled the air again, and something scuffled on the other side of the trees. Felix trembled, but Imraldera remained calm. “It cannot come inside,” she said. “You are in the Prince’s Haven. Nothing may come inside without his permission.”

  Felix leaned heavily in her arms, sick with fever and fear. “Come,” she said. “Let’s get you back to bed.” She led him back down the hall, and Felix felt more peaceful, though the strange creature still snuffled and roared just beyond the trees. When they stepped back into the clearing-bedchamber, all sounds from the other side were silenced. Felix let the woman cover him in the soft sheets. Sleep descended upon him.

  “Why does he not use the sword?” Felix whispered before he slipped away.

  “He will at the proper time,” the young woman replied. “Sleep, Felix.”

  –––––––

  From Shippening, Una flew across the Chiara Bay and the thin isthmus that attached Southlands to the Continent, then on over the ring of mountains that encircled most of the country. She beheld Southlands for the first time.

  It was a strange country, far stranger than Una had expected. Beneath her lay a flatland scored by deep gorges filled with dark forest. Like green-black rivers, these gorges cut the stretches of tableland into vast islands. Connecting these islands, bridges stained by dragon smoke yet still white and beautiful soared in elegant arches.

  As a child she had heard tell of the acclaimed Southlands bridges but had never been able to envision them for herself. She could well believe the legend that they had not been built by the hand of man, for what man could design such marvels? They crisscrossed, gleaming high above the dark forests below, connecting the cities and towns of Southlands, providing communion among the people that would otherwise have been impossible, unless men dared brave the forests below the plateaus.

  On the plateaus, Una beheld cities of glorious towers and minarets such as she had never seen before, and the colors that presented themselves to her eyes were beyond her experience. They were familiar in some senses – green, red, or blue. But the shades were different, the hues bolder, more intense than anything she had before seen. And the frequent patches of blackened land, charred and smoking still, only made the colors seem brighter beneath the blue of the Southlands sky.

  She thought of her homeland, last seen shrouded in dragon smoke, devoid of color. And her fire burned bitterly in her breast.

  On and on she flew across the strange countryside, hardly knowing where to search. But at last, as she passed over the largest and most beautiful of the bridges, something caught her eye.

  The desecrated castle.

  She recognized it from her dream: the enormous, fire-ravaged structure surrounded by ruined gardens of skeletal tree stumps and ash-blown shrubberies. It was restored some now, not so decayed as it had appeared in her dreams. Several of the towers were being rebuilt, and much of the ash had been cleaned from its stones, revealing the colors beneath. But she recognized it as the hateful palace of her nightmares.

  And she knew that here was Lionheart’s home.

  Before the great castle was a city, the greatest of all the cities she had yet seen. It bore deep black scars from many fires among the streets and tall buildings. Nevertheless, as she flew high above it, she could feel the excitement of teeming life below her.

  She could not land anywhere near for fear of being seen, so she chose instead to take shelter in the deep ravine beside the plateau, beneath the black covering of forest. The trees grew so thickly there that they blocked out the sun, for which she was grateful. The ground trembled as she landed, but other than the sounds she made as she crawled through the brambles of the forest floor, all was silent. There was a sense of deadness in the air of the forest. And beneath the deadness, a smell of life that was not life. She smelled it through her own smoke, and it made her shudder.

  Una crawled to the edge of the forest, where the land began to slope up steeply and the trees ended in an abrupt line, and gazed up to the white arc of a bridge high above her. She realized suddenly that she had flown for many days without rest. Her wings and limbs quivered, aching for respite.

  “I cannot rest,” she told herself. “I cannot rest until I find . . . I must find him. But how can I do so in this state?”

  She looked down at her claws, huge and black and gnarled. “He won’t even recognize me. Leonard . . . how could you love a monster?”

  A growl rumbled deep in her throat, and flames slid between her teeth. With a vicious snarl, she opened her mouth and let out a billow of fire on her own limbs, then turned her head and blew more fiercely on her body and wings, wishing she could burn herself away and be no more.

  When the smoke cleared, Una looked again, and one hand was that of a princess. The other was scale-covered and cruel.

  26

  The dragon fire that sustained her had sunk low in her breast. But Una felt it there still, where her heart should be. “No,” she whispered, clutching the front of her gown. “Let it die. Just let it die.”

  She knew it would not.

  She practiced walking among the tall forest trees, struggling to carry herself upright and lift her feet. Her movements needed to be less awkward if she was going to pass unnoticed in the city. The sun rose high above her, but the air was icy. She welcomed the fierceness of winter air against her skin, however, desperate to cool the burning that pulsed through her. Her left hand seemed to suck the light into its dark scales and render it blackness. She covered it with her human hand, tried to tuck it under the folds of her tattered garments. The left sleeve of her dress was still mostly intact, and she pulled it low over her knuckles.

  “I must find him,” she told herself, looking out from the shelter of the forest up toward the city. “Or at least have word of him.”

  The thought filled her with fear. The Dragon’s words came to mind:

  “Betrothed to another.”

  She stepped out of the trees. “It’s not true,” she said. The place on her finger where her mother’s ring had once sat felt strangely bare. Una clenched her hands, human and dragon, into fists. “I trust him.”

  Fire burned her throat, but she swallowed it back.

  The climb was long and hard, particularly now that she was unused to her small human body. She discovered a path that progressed steeply up the otherwise sheer rock face, and she followed it, sometimes bent double to use her hands as well as her feet
. The muscles in her arms shook with effort, and often she had to stop and breathe deeply, closing her eyes.

  The sun set and the moon rose. Somehow, the white face of the moon was more terrible to her than the sun’s golden rays. The moonlight was icy, and she thought she would freeze on the outside even as she burned to death within. She lay down upon the trail, exhausted, her arms over her face to shield her from the moon’s eye, and slept a tormented sleep.

  When Una woke she did not open her eyes but kept her arms over her face, feeling the sharp scales of the left one biting into the skin of her cheek. She did not want to face the sun nor the rest of the climb. Birds sang their morning chorus, and she cursed them bitterly between her teeth.

  A jangling bell sounded in her ear, startling her from her stupor of misery. She sat up, every part of her body aching from a night spent on rocks, and looked up the path.

  A goat stood not many paces above her. It flicked its ears and winked its yellow eyes at her, then voiced a disapproving, “Bah!”

  “Good morning to you too!” Una snapped, drawing up her legs and scowling at the goat. She pressed her forehead into her knees, once more blocking the sunlight and wondering where she would find the strength to continue her long climb. Perhaps she would not try. Perhaps she would simply stay put until the sun and the moon burned her away to nothing and the fire inside her went out.

  “Oh!” a voice said. “There is someone!”

  Una startled for the second time that morning and blinked up the path once more. Beyond the goat another figure appeared. At first she could not tell if it was male or female, for the person’s face was shrouded in a linen veil and the voice that spoke was very soft and hard to discern. But on second glance, Una determined it was a girl, a small one with hunched shoulders and a hand put out to touch the rock wall on her right.